PHJC lose hay barn to Monday night fire

July 12, 2006|ANITA MUNSON Tribune Staff Writer

DONALDSON -- Responders from five firefighting units tried unsuccessfully Monday night to save a hay barn owned by the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ Ministries. Plymouth firefighters were dispatched at 9:19 p.m. Monday, and immediately requested mutual assistance when the dispatcher said the barn -- two-thirds full of some 250 to 300 bales of hay -- was fully engulfed in flames. Personnel remained on-scene for 5 hours and 21 minutes. Sisters Nora Hahn and Margaret Anne Henss were on their way back from South Bend Monday night, in separate vehicles, when they saw the smoke. Both were re-routed by Marshall County Sheriff's Department personnel, who worked to keep Union Road clear for emergency responders. Fearing that the fire may have originated at the Catherine Kasper Home operated by PHJCM, the sisters were relieved, they said, when they learned it was a hay barn. "But there were so many people who showed up to help that even if it had been at the home, everyone would have been all right," Sister Nora said. PHJCM officials said two sisters first discovered the fire and made the emergency 911 call. The two-story barn, only about six years old and constructed after a similar 1999 fire wiped out a previously standing hay barn, could not be saved. But a second barn, where about five cows and the same number of calves had been kept, was spared. The cattle were in the pasture at the time of the fire. The sisters said that Jan Warner, the lead farmer who had worked some 150 acres to raise the hay, told them that the fire occurred early enough in the season that he thinks the hay can be replaced.